New research provided to AllThingsD by Web tracking firm Chitika shows that as of midnight ET on July 30, Mountain Lion was generating 5.83 percent of all Mac Web traffic. That makes it Apple’s fourth most popular desktop OS after Leopard; Snow Leopard remains by far the most popular with a usage rate of 44.60 percent. It also means Mountain Lion has had the most successful Mac OS launch to date, a point recently driven home by Apple’s announcement Monday that it had been downloaded 3 million times in just four days.

Thanks to its easy download and low price, Apple’s Mountain Lion appears on pace to be one of the most quickly adopted operating systems in history.

After just its first 48 hours on the market, Apple’s new Mountain Lion already accounts for more than 3 percent of Mac Web traffic, according to numbers provided to AllThingsD by Web tracking firm Chitika.

“Moreover, based on Apple’s June 2012 announcement that there are currently 66 million Mac users in the wild, we can infer that 2.11 million Mac users downloaded OS X Mountain Lion in the past 48 hours,” Chitika said. “Using this figure, if we assume that 90 percent of these users paid to upgrade, OS X Mountain Lion generated $38 million in revenue for Apple in the past 48 hours.”

Just how many of those users are paid upgrades is tough to say, though. In addition to non-paid use, Apple also allows Mac users to upgrade all their personal Macs for a single $19.99 fee.

What is clear, though, is the low price tag combined with electronic delivery appear to be a winning combination for getting users to quickly move to the new operating system. Chitika notes that it took Apple three months to reach 14 percent market share with Lion, its last update. The Web tracking company said it would expect Apple to hit that goal much faster.

Apple released Mountain Lion, also known as Mac OS 10.8, on Wednesday as a digital download from its Mac App Store.

The update includes a number of features brought over from the iPhone and iPad, including support for iMessage, a notification center, Twitter integration and dictation.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20120727/apples-mountain-lion-off-to-a-roaring-start/feed/0Apple's WWDC Keynote by the Numbershttp://allthingsd.com/20120612/apples-wwdc-keynote-by-the-numbers/
http://allthingsd.com/20120612/apples-wwdc-keynote-by-the-numbers/#commentsTue, 12 Jun 2012 11:01:46 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=219068The hardware, software and service offerings unveiled during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address Monday made for the biggest story to come out of the event. But there was another, a story told in numbers — really big numbers. Liberally sprinkled throughout the keynote were a bunch of metrics and data points that collectively amount to a brief State of the Union for Apple.

Below, a rundown of those numbers:

This was Apple’s 23rd WWDC, making it the longest-running developer conference around.

It sold out in one hour and 43 minutes.

It hosts attendees from more than 60 countries.

There are 400 million App Store accounts.

And there are about 650,000 apps in the App Store itself.

225,000 of those apps are designed specifically for iPad.

30 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store so far.

The App Store has generated five billion dollars in revenue for developers.

Soon, Apple will bring the App Store to 32 more countries, making it available in a grand total of 155 countries.

There are 66 million Mac users — triple the number Apple had just five years ago.

26 million copies of Lion have been shipped so far.

40 percent of OS X users are running Lion.

Mountain Lion will be the eighth major release of OS X.

It will feature more than 200 new features and 1,700 new APIs.

iCloud’s user base has grown to 125 million.

Through the end of March, Apple had sold 365 million iOS devices.

More than 80 percent of iOS users are running iOS 5.

There are currently 140 million iMessage users.

They send around one billion iMessages per day.

iOS has delivered 1.5 trillion push notifications so far.

There are currently 130 million Game Center accounts.

Five billion scores have been posted from them.

More than 10 billion tweets have been sent from iOS 5.

About 47 percent of all photos posted to Twitter are sent from devices running iOS 5.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20120612/apples-wwdc-keynote-by-the-numbers/feed/0Mountain Lion and Windows 8's Common Aim: Make Desktop More Like Mobilehttp://allthingsd.com/20120216/apples-mountain-lion-and-microsofts-windows-8-both-aim-to-make-desktop-more-like-mobile/
http://allthingsd.com/20120216/apples-mountain-lion-and-microsofts-windows-8-both-aim-to-make-desktop-more-like-mobile/#commentsThu, 16 Feb 2012 15:16:24 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=175400Although they are doing it in different ways, Apple and Microsoft are aiming for a similar goal with their next desktop operating systems: To make the computer more like the phone.

Apple on Thursday announced its plans for Mountain Lion, Mac OS X 10.8. Due this summer, it brings over a number of popular iOS features, including notifications, reminders, Twitter integration and iMessage, plus synchronization with iCloud.

Perhaps most importantly, Windows 8 will support the power-savvy ARM chips found in phones and tablets, in addition to the Intel and AMD chips that have traditionally powered Windows PCs.

This isn’t a one-time move, either. The first Lion was also an attempt at the same thing, adding support for full-screen apps and other features first shown on the iPhone and iPad.

Such moves make sense. Not only are smartphones and their apps rapidly growing in adoption, but people expect their computers — especially laptops — to be just as mobile. And the next generation of computer users are growing up expecting everything to be like an iPad.

Apple and Microsoft are also once again close in timing for their new operating systems. Apple says Mountain Lion should be out this summer. Microsoft hasn’t given an exact timing for Windows 8, but chipmakers and PC manufacturers are counting on having Windows 8 machines ready later this year.

One area where Apple and Microsoft have differed is over touch capabilities. On the desktop, Apple has kept its gestures to the trackpad, rather than make its screens touch-sensitive.

Microsoft, meanwhile, has been early at bringing touch to the desktop and laptop. Windows 7 offered built-in multitouch support, and Windows 8 appears designed to be manipulated by hand, though it will work with keyboard and mouse.

Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg said that Apple and Microsoft are taking very different approaches.

“Microsoft wants them to look the same,” Gartenberg said. “Apple wants them to feel the same.”

Gartenberg said that Microsoft has struggled with a similar approach in the past, noting that Windows Mobile initially aimed to replicate the Windows desktop down to the start menu — an approach that was not popular with consumers.

“It seems like Microsoft is again trying to say let’s make one size fit all,” he said. “That hasn’t worked out particularly well for them in the past. It feels like trying to put a square peg in a round hole.”

Apple, Gartenberg said, is trying to replicate some of the experiences popular on the iPhone and iPad, but is doing so in a more context-aware manner that reflects the different way computers are used as compared with phones and tablets.

“The market will decide which one fundamentally works better,” he said.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20120216/apples-mountain-lion-and-microsofts-windows-8-both-aim-to-make-desktop-more-like-mobile/feed/0Meet Mountain Lion: The Latest Mac OShttp://allthingsd.com/20120216/meet-mountain-lion-the-latest-mac-os/
http://allthingsd.com/20120216/meet-mountain-lion-the-latest-mac-os/#commentsThu, 16 Feb 2012 13:33:30 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=175244Apple today took the wraps off a preview version of the next version of its Mac operating system software. Its name is Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, and it will be available this summer.

Among the headline features are deep integration with Apple’s iCloud service, and with Twitter. And several features from iOS devices, like Messages and Reminder, are making their debut on the Mac, and will create a more unified experience among Macs, iPads and iPhones.

The release, which is coming only a year after Lion debuted last summer, might just indicate a speeding up of the cadence at which Apple does Mac software upgrades. Usually there’s an interval of 18 months to 24 months between major OS upgrades. That makes this announcement a bit of a surprise. Does that mean we can expect another one about 18 months from now? We’ll see.

Here’s a quick rundown of the 10 new features:

iCloud built in: Mountain Lion will be the first version of OS X built with iCloud fully integrated. Documents in the Cloud is a new feature that will allow documents you create and edit on the Mac to sync up and readily be available on iPhones and iPads. Changes you make in the document on one device will automatically appear on the other. You’ll be able to use iCloud from the moment you start up your Mac and sign in with an Apple ID.

Messages: It’s crazy to think about it, but iMessage users on the iPhone and iPad have sent something like 26 billion messages in only the few months it has been available. Messages is the new instant messaging application that will replace iChat. It will unify the experience between the Mac and iOS devices, and will still be compatible with services like Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Jabber, but will also bring iMessages into the Mac. Conversations stay up to date across all devices. It supports photos and videos. Also? There’s a FaceTime button.

Twitter: Twitter is also deeply integrated into Mountain Lion. You’ll be able to tweet directly from within several applications, sharing Web site addresses, photos and videos. Central to this is something Apple calls the Tweet Sheet, which you call up from the Share menu. It grabs what you want to share on Twitter and you write your tweet from directly within the Mac OS. And as cool as this is, it’s notable also for what it’s not: Facebook integration. Expect lots of speculation around that.

Share Sheets: Sharing is kind of a big deal these days, so it makes sense that the ability to do it — whether on Twitter or via email or any one of the cloud services out there — would be available on the Mac. There’s a new Share button in Safari and in other applications that makes it easy to send a photo to a friend via email or to Flickr, or a video to Vimeo or to another computer via AirDrop.

Notification Center: The dashboard of notices saying what’s going on in iOS is coming to the Mac. Similar to how you reach it on the iPhone — a swipe down along the length of the screen — it will appear on the Mac with a two-finger swipe from the right edge of the trackpad, and the list will appear on the right side of the screen. When you get a notification from an application — say, an email has arrived, or a download is finished, or a calendar reminder is going off — you can see them all in one place. Also, short messages with notifications appear in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, and then fade away after a few seconds. It reminds me a great deal of a third-party application enhancer I use, called Growl.

Reminders: Another popular iOS app is being added to the Mac. Your to-do list remains synced across the Mac, iPhone and iPad, and you can add reminders that pop up throughout the day, so you don’t forget.

Notes: The all-purpose “take this down for later” application gets the Mac treatment. Soon you’ll be able to drag URLs into a note. And thanks to iCloud, they’ll be synced across Mac, iPhone and iPad. You’ll also be able to “pin” a note to your desktop, meaning it will stay open even if you close the main Notes application. Notes also has a Share button.

Game Center: Long a weakness on the Mac, gaming is getting stronger all the time. Games, it turns out, are the most popular software titles on the Mac App store. So it makes sense to bring the Game Center experience from iOS to the Mac. I saw a quick demo, where two people played a racing game against each other — can’t remember which game exactly — one was on the iPad, the other on the Mac. You’ll be able to challenge friends, keep track of your standings on a leaderboard and see what games your friends like. There’s also support for in-game voice chat, so you can talk trash.

Gatekeeper: Expect this feature to be controversial among Mac software developers. Basically, it’s an attempt by Apple to deal with the fact that the one serious security threat it faces is software that looks good at first but turns out to behave badly only after you’ve downloaded and installed it. The new scheme basically sets up a three-tier system, where the user can decide from where they will be allowed to download and install new software. In the most restrictive — or some will argue safest — case, you can set your Mac to allow only software from the Mac App store. As it does with the App Store on iOS devices, Apple vets the software sold there for safety. In the second case — this one not as restrictive — you can install software from sources other than the App Store, but only from developers who have signed up as a known developer. Here, Apple will not have checked the app for safety, but will at least vouch that the developer is known. Developers will have the option of signing up for a Developer ID. This is the part that I think they’ll find a little controversial. Anyway, in the third case, there are no restrictions. You can install software from any developer and any source, much as you can do today.

AirPlay Mirroring: If you have an Apple TV handy, you’ll be able to use your TV as a screen for your Mac — it’s super easy. If they’re on the same wireless network, the Mac will have a simple pulldown menu that makes your TV mirror what’s on the Mac.

Finally, Apple added a lot of new features for the Chinese market. Text input has been improved, and several popular Web services — like Baidu for search, integration with Sina Weibo for Twitter-like sharing and video-sharing with Youku and Tudou — have been built in, in order to make the Mac OS experience a lot more China-friendly than it has been before. Given the Apple madness that has struck that country in recent months, it will certainly find a happy audience.

You recently reviewed an iPad app that lets you use Microsoft Office programs on an iPad. But does this support the “Track Changes” feature of Office, which I cannot find on any of the office-type apps I’ve tried on the iPad?

A:

Yes, it does. And tracked changes are synchronized with your PC or Mac.

As I noted in the review, the new app, called OnLive Desktop, gives you the complete Windows version of Office on an iPad, via the cloud. So all features in the Windows version, including the tracking of changes, are available.

Q:

I am a new Mac user and would like to become a Quicken user. I read your February 2010 critique of Mac Quicken. Is there a new and improved version of Mac Quicken?

A:

Intuit, the maker of the stripped-down Quicken Essentials for Mac I reviewed then, has improved the product. But more important, the company now says its last full version of Quicken for the Mac, called Quicken 2007, will soon be revised so that it runs with Lion, the latest version of the Macintosh operating system.

There was outrage from Mac Quicken users when Intuit earlier had declined to rewrite the full version to work with Lion.

Q:

Could you please tell me which smartphone today is a must if my last phone was the iPhone 4? Your review of the iPhone 4S indicated it wasn’t a “must” upgrade for iPhone 4 owners.

A:

Changing to a different phone would only be a “must” for you if you were unhappy with your iPhone, or wanted one of a couple of key features only available on competing phones.

One would be a larger screen. The iPhone screen is 3.5 inches, but some newer Android phones, such as the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, now have giant screens as large as 4.65 inches. Personally, I find that too large for comfort, but you might not.

Another important feature is LTE wireless capability. A number of Android phones, such as the Motorola Droid RAZR, support LTE, a fourth-generation wireless technology that is much, much faster at data downloads than 3G, though it also tends to use up your battery faster. No iPhone yet supports LTE.

Facebook doesn’t make it quick or easy. The default choice is to “deactivate” your account, which allows you to change your mind and reactivate, and thus spare the company the loss of a member. Deactivated accounts can’t be seen by others, but all their data remain on Facebook’s servers. You can totally and permanently delete an account, but this isn’t a simple process. You have to submit a request, at http://on.fb.me/n5OemK, or go to the Facebook help center and search for “delete account.” Then you have to wait awhile, while Facebook hopes you change your mind. More information on both options is at: http://on.fb.me/pxjtS2.

Q:

I am generally very pleased with the MacBook Air that I recently purchased. However, when I am on the road, I find that my Air loses connectivity to the wireless network that I am using. Any thoughts or suggestions? This is frustrating.

A:

I have noticed something similar lately, on my own MacBook Air that’s been upgraded to the new Lion operating system. It doesn’t randomly drop Wi-Fi connections, but it does take too long to reestablish them when waking from sleep. In my case, this is a new and recent behavior. I asked Apple about your question and my experience, and the company conceded that it has received reports of problems with Lion-equipped Macs “sporadically” dropping Wi-Fi connections and is developing what it hopes is a fix. That fix, it says, will be part of a software update to be made available soon.

A fix is coming for MacBook Air machines with Wi-Fi problems.

Q:

I want a tablet for occasional road trips. If I get a Wi-Fi-only model do I need to worry about my passwords being stolen if I use an open network? Is it better, if cumbersome, to use my Droid X smartphone to set up a password-protected Wi-Fi hot spot and connect through it?

A:

I have long advised avoiding shared, open, public Wi-Fi networks when dealing with sensitive data. I am not a security expert, and I am sure there are ways for determined hackers to penetrate your Droid, or any smartphone. But I agree that your odds are much better with a password-protected network that you control, that only you use, and that relies on a cellular network proprietary to a wireless carrier. Just remember that your security is never guaranteed on the Internet, especially in public places.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20111005/delete-a-facebook-account/feed/0Commas, Zeros and the Number One: Apple's iPhone 4S Event by the Numbershttp://allthingsd.com/20111004/commas-zeros-and-no-1-apples-iphone-4s-event-by-the-numbers/
http://allthingsd.com/20111004/commas-zeros-and-no-1-apples-iphone-4s-event-by-the-numbers/#commentsTue, 04 Oct 2011 23:30:49 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=128572As Apple events go, today’s was as heavy on metrics as any in recent memory, with newly installed CEO Tim Cook kicking off his presentation with a victory lap full of commas and zeros. Below, a rundown of the numbers trotted out.

Apple currently has 357 retail stores in 11 countries.

More than six million copies of OS X Lion have been downloaded through the Mac App Store.

That’s 80 percent more than Snow Leopard.

It took Lion two weeks to reach 10 percent of its user base. It took Windows 7 20 weeks to do the same.

The Mac is the number one best-selling desktop and notebook in the United States; it’s approaching 60 million users around the world, and its growth has outpaced the PC market every single quarter for the past 5 years.

The iPod, which launched 10 years ago, is still the number one music player in the world.

Apple has sold more than 300 million iPods to date. It took Sony 30 years to sell 220,000 Walkman cassette players. (Note: it seems Apple is a bit off on the Sony portion of this metric)

The company sold 45 million iPods last year alone, and almost half of purchasers bought for the first time.

iTunes is the number one music store in the world.

There are now 20 million songs in iTunes; over 16 billion songs have been downloaded from it to date.

The iPhone is the number one smartphone in the world.

93 percent of the Fortune 500 companies are deploying or testing the iPhone.

The iPhone is number one in customer satisfaction.

J.D. Power has ranked it as the number one smartphone six times in a row.

Almost 1,000 K-12 schools have a 1:1 iPad deployment program.

More than 80 percent of hospitals in the U.S. are testing iPads.

92 percent of the Fortune 500 are testing or deploying the iPad.

The iPad is the number one tablet in the world.

Three out of four tablets sold in the U.S. are iPads.

There have been 250 million iOS devices sold so far.

There are more than 500,000 apps in the App Store. More than 140,000 are designed specifically for the iPad.

Customers have downloaded more than 18 billion apps to date.

There are about 1 billion apps downloaded per month.

Apple has paid out $3 billion dollars to developers so far.

The iPod touch is the number one portable game player.

By December, the iPhone will be in more than 70 countries on more than 100 carriers.

I am going to purchase a tablet computer. I was thinking of buying the Asus Transformer tablet, as it has a keyboard add-on. What are your thoughts on this tablet?

A:

I haven’t reviewed it, but the Transformer’s optional keyboard, which costs $150, is really a docking station that includes an extra battery and various ports.

If you just want a separate keyboard, you should know that other Android tablets, as well as Apple’s iPad, can connect easily to simple, less expensive wireless keyboards.

Q:

Is it true that Apple has stopped including iDVD, its longtime DVD-creation app, on new Macs? Has the program been killed?

A:

Yes and no. According to the company, new Macs with the Lion operating system no longer come with iDVD or another former standard program, iWeb. However, both programs are still included in the $49 iLife suite, which is sold separately. Apple defends the decision to drop iDVD on grounds that more people are sharing photos and videos online and not on disks. The company also has dropped DVD drives from some of its popular laptops.

Q:

You provided instructions on how to delete old email addresses on Gmail. I have the same problem with Apple Mail, only the old addresses aren’t in the address book but still appear when I type their names in the To field. How do I delete these?

A:

Apple Mail suggests previously used email addresses even if they aren’t in your address book. To get rid of one, accept it, so it appears in the To field. Then select it and click on the downward-pointing triangle at the right. A menu will appear. From that menu, choose “Remove from Previous Recipients List.”

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20110921/a-tablet-with-a-keyboard/feed/0A Parallels World Where Windows Zips on Macshttp://allthingsd.com/20110831/parallels-desktop-for-mac-review/
http://allthingsd.com/20110831/parallels-desktop-for-mac-review/#commentsThu, 01 Sep 2011 01:03:09 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=115987Apple’s Macintosh computers have long been able to run Windows, in addition to their native operating system, Mac OS X. But the process has sometimes been clumsy, slow or taxing to the machine and it hasn’t been tailored to the new Lion version of Apple’s OS.

Now, the most popular utility for running Windows programs simultaneously with Mac programs has been updated in a speedier version that takes advantage of some Lion features. It’s called Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac, and it goes on sale Sept. 1, as a $50 upgrade for current Parallels users and on Sept. 6 for new users at $80. The product comes from a Seattle company of the same name.

I’ve been testing the new Parallels 7 on last year’s version of the MacBook Air laptop, running Lion with 4 gigabytes of memory. That’s the recommended amount of memory for running Windows 7, the version of Windows I tested.

In my tests, this latest Parallels edition ran Windows quickly and smoothly, and integrated well with some of Lion’s new features, even though my test Mac isn’t the fastest Apple laptop available today.

For instance, while I’m writing this in a Mac program on the Air, I’m simultaneously running the Windows-only Internet Explorer Web browser, and a couple of other Windows programs, with no discernible slowdown in any of them. I can easily recommend Parallels 7 to Mac users who need to use Windows programs some of the time.

Parallels Desktop 7 lets Windows programs, like Excel on the left, appear on the Mac as if they were Mac programs, without the Windows desktop.

I also tested a new companion Parallels Mobile iPad and iPhone app, which allows you to remotely control both your Mac and Windows running on your Mac. I am less sanguine about this product, which also goes on sale Thursday, for an introductory price of $5 (the regular price is $20). It did work, but like similar mobile programs for controlling PCs, I found it a bit awkward to use.

Parallels works by creating a so-called virtual machine inside your Mac. Within this virtual machine, you can install a copy of Windows you’ve purchased and it will behave like a faux Windows computer, compatible with the same programs as a physical Windows PC.

You can run Windows programs on your Mac either in one large window that displays the Windows desktop and taskbar, or in a mode that allows the Windows programs you run to simply appear on the Mac as if they were Mac programs, without the Windows desktop.

Going Back and Forth

Either way, you can switch back and forth between this virtual Windows computer and your regular Mac environment. You can copy and paste material between Mac programs and Windows programs, and drag files between the two operating systems. You can even open files from the Mac side of the machine in Windows programs, provided they are compatible.

This isn’t the same as another method for running Windows on a Mac, called Boot Camp—a built-in feature of the Mac designed by Apple. Boot Camp, which also requires you to purchase and install Windows, has two big advantages over Parallels: It’s free, and it dedicates the Mac’s hardware solely to Windows, so it runs Windows programs even faster.

But it has a big disadvantage. It doesn’t allow you to run both operating systems simultaneously, or copy and paste material between them. With Boot Camp, if you want to switch between the Mac OS and Windows, you have to reboot the Mac.

I found that the new Parallels started and resumed Windows much faster than its predecessor. When launching Windows, the Mac no longer slowed to a crawl, as it had in past versions.

All Windows 7 programs I tested launched and ran quickly and smoothly, and the fancy visual effects in Windows 7, such as mini-previews for icons in the taskbar, worked great.

Playing Solitaire

I was able to run the Windows versions of Microsoft Office (including Outlook), Quicken, and many other programs. I also easily ran such Windows-only programs as IE, Windows Media Player and even the venerable Windows Solitaire.

In addition, the new Parallels for the first time can take advantage of the Mac’s built-in webcam.

It has a new wizard for creating a virtual machine. And now, it will even allow you to buy, download and install Windows right from within Parallels. Previously, you had to obtain Windows separately. This is a big improvement, in my view.

Windows in Launchpad

Windows, and Windows programs, can be displayed in Lion’s new Launchpad feature, which mimics the main screen of an iPad. They also show up and behave like Mac programs in Lion’s new Mission Control feature, which shows all the programs running on the Mac in miniature. Windows programs can also run in Lion’s new full-screen mode.

The companion iPad app has been enhanced so it not only remotely controls the virtual machine, but the entire Mac. This has some advantages, such as allowing you to view Flash videos that the iPad normally can’t play, by playing them remotely on the computer.

But I found that, as on other iPad apps for remotely controlling computers, controlling PC and Mac screens is difficult using iPad gestures.

Many Virtual Machines

Parallels 7 can create and run multiple virtual machines, and also handle operating systems other than Windows. For instance, I was able to run Linux and an open-source version of Google’s Chrome OS on my Mac using Parallels. At one point in my tests, I had four operating systems running at once, and could control all four from an iPad.

Oddly, the new Parallels can even run a second, virtual copy of Lion, on a Lion-equipped Mac, though this would mainly be of interest to developers testing products.

(Apple says Lion won’t work in a virtual machine running on a PC.)

There are a couple of drawbacks to Parallels 7. As in prior versions, it can’t run the most graphics-intensive Windows games and other programs, so heavy-duty gamers will do better with Boot Camp or a physical Windows PC. And I found it wouldn’t share my Verizon 4G data modem with the Mac OS.

If you’re likely to be using Windows most of the time, it’s best to just use a regular Windows PC. But for Mac users who need to run a few Windows programs some of the time, Parallels 7 is a fine product.

Write to Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20110831/parallels-desktop-for-mac-review/feed/0New MacBook Airs, Lion Spike Summer Mac Saleshttp://allthingsd.com/20110823/new-macbook-airs-lion-spike-summer-mac-sales/
http://allthingsd.com/20110823/new-macbook-airs-lion-spike-summer-mac-sales/#commentsTue, 23 Aug 2011 10:30:50 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=112832The debut of Apple’s new MacBook Airs and Lion OS has done what many predicted: It has sent Mac sales into the stratosphere.

According to the latest metrics from NPD, domestic Mac sales for the first month of the September quarter were up 26 percent year over year, buoyed by new hardware and an eagerly anticipated update to Apple’s OS X. That’s more than six times the growth of the broader PC market.

And if it continues, Apple will likely meet consensus estimates of 4.5 million total Mac sales for the current quarter, said Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. “We believe Mac sales benefited from the 7/20 launch of OS X Lion along with refreshed MacBook Airs and Mac minis,” Munster explained in a note to clients. “But these tailwinds will fade throughout the September quarter and year-over-year compares get slightly tougher in the last two months of the quarter.”

Said Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes, “We believe Apple will continue to gain share in Macs over the long term even as the iPad grows. Given the data and our checks, our estimate for Mac growth of 18 percent year-over-year for Apple’s C3Q, may turn out to be conservative even though the global economy appears to be slowing quite a bit.”

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20110823/new-macbook-airs-lion-spike-summer-mac-sales/feed/0Apple Updates Lionhttp://allthingsd.com/20110816/apple-updates-lion/
http://allthingsd.com/20110816/apple-updates-lion/#commentsTue, 16 Aug 2011 20:49:06 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=110785Apple on Tuesday released the first maintenance update for its newly released Lion operating system. Mac OS X 10.7.1 improves the reliability of Wi-Fi connections and resolves some audio and video playback issues, among other things. A separate update is available for MacBook Air and Mac mini owners.
]]>http://allthingsd.com/20110816/apple-updates-lion/feed/0Lion With Officehttp://allthingsd.com/20110727/lion-with-office/
http://allthingsd.com/20110727/lion-with-office/#commentsThu, 28 Jul 2011 01:02:29 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=103542Q:

I have been warned on the Web that Microsoft Office won’t work on Apple’s new Mac operating system, Lion. Is this true?

A:

In my tests, and also according to Microsoft, Office for the Mac does work in Lion, though some relatively minor features won’t work right. Also, you must be using one of the two latest versions of Office.

In my tests, using the current version, Office 2011, all features I tested worked fine, though of course I wasn’t able to test every one of the thousands of features. I even wrote my entire Lion review in Word 2011 on a Lion-equipped Mac. According to Microsoft, the 2008 version also works, though the 2004 version doesn’t.

However, Microsoft hasn’t updated Office for Mac to take advantage of Lion’s new features. More information on Mac Office compatibility with Lion is here and here.

Q:

Can you point me in the right direction for a purchase of a tablet? I am a home inspector and presently use a Toshiba Satellite laptop with a special Windows software program for my job. I need a tablet with a screen size of 12 inches or more. USB ports would be essential.

I am willing to spend up to $3,000. I need it to be visible in daylight, because I must walk around the property.

A:

You may have trouble finding a tablet that meets all your criteria. If you need to run special Windows software on a tablet with a USB port, you might consider one of the Windows 7 models, aimed mainly at businesses. A good example is the $1200 Asus Eee Slate EP121. I haven’t tested it, but it has a 12″ screen, dual USB ports, and works with either finger or stylus input. The only problem is that it uses a backlit, laptop-type screen, and these aren’t typically great for viewing in direct sunlight.

Q:

An Apple store employee told us that each Apple mobile device battery should be depleted to 0% once per month to keep its battery healthy. Is this necessary?

A:

That’s correct. Here’s part of the company’s advice on iPhone batteries: “For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down).”

In its advice on laptop batteries, the company states, in part: “Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time.” It adds that, if you don’t drain and recharge your Mac laptop in the course of normal usage, “Apple recommends charging and discharging its battery at least once per month.”

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20110727/lion-with-office/feed/0MacBook Air-Related Delayed Gratification Could Juice Apple Earningshttp://allthingsd.com/20110727/macbook-air-related-delayed-gratification-could-juice-apple-earnings/
http://allthingsd.com/20110727/macbook-air-related-delayed-gratification-could-juice-apple-earnings/#commentsWed, 27 Jul 2011 11:10:02 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=102939With refreshed hardware and a brand-new OS on the market, Apple’s September quarter is likely to be another triumph for Cupertino, despite the comically low guidance the company provided when reporting third-quarter earnings.

iPad sales are booming and the iPhone 4 continues to sell well despite its age. Now, with new MacBook Airs and Mac minis on the shelves and the Mac App Store serving up one million downloads of Lion in a single day, Apple is poised to reap the benefits of what up until last week was pent-up demand for those products, particularly the MacBook Air. According to Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes, Apple’s latest ultraslim laptops will give the company a nice little financial bump for the remainder of the year.

“We believe that the new MacBook Air products in particular could be a source of upside for Apple in the 2nd half of CY11,” Reitzes says. “For the September quarter, we estimate Mac unit sales to grow 18% y/y, which may be conservative given anticipation for the MacBook Air. Also, we believe that there was a modest pause of demand ahead of Lion, which consequently should release at least some incremental sales in the upcoming quarters in our opinion.”

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20110727/macbook-air-related-delayed-gratification-could-juice-apple-earnings/feed/0Courage for Lion Usershttp://allthingsd.com/20110726/courage-for-lion-users/
http://allthingsd.com/20110726/courage-for-lion-users/#commentsTue, 26 Jul 2011 22:58:01 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=102899Apple’s Lion has roared onto Macs, with one million downloads of the new operating system in the first day it was available. IPhone or iPad users will be familiar with Lion’s nod toward navigating with gestures. But for others, Lion could be uncharted territory. I’ve compiled some helpful shortcuts and tips for using Lion and some of its less-obvious yet useful features.

For those people frustrated by Lion, I’ll also include instructions on how to revert some features to work the way they did in Apple’s previous operating system, Snow Leopard. If all else fails, I’ll tell you how to uninstall Lion altogether. But all new operating systems require an adjustment period, so give yourself some time with Lion before giving up.

Heads or Tails of Scrolling

Probably the one feature that will take the most getting used to is Lion’s new way of scrolling. Rather than placing two fingers on the touch pad and moving them down together to navigate down in a Web page, list or document, Lion does the opposite. Think of reading a real piece of paper: As you read down, your eyes would move down and you’d push the paper up. So now, scrolling down happens by putting two fingers on the touch pad and moving up. Scrolling up works by moving two fingers down the touch pad. The scroll bar disappears when you aren’t scrolling.

If you’d rather switch back to the classic way of scrolling, go to System Preferences, Trackpad, Scroll & Zoom and uncheck “Scroll direction: natural.” Also go into System Preferences, Mouse, Point & Click and uncheck “Scroll direction: natural.” If you desperately miss seeing your scrollbar, go to System Preferences, General, Show scroll bars and choose “Always” in the top of the middle section.

Uncovering Exposé

If you’re like me, you loved using Snow Leopard’s Exposé, which took a four-finger downward swipe to expose all running apps. Lion has a more robust way of viewing all the things on a Mac, called Mission Control. A feature called App Exposé uses a three-finger downward swipe to expose all windows running in an app. This isn’t on by default, so go to System Preferences, Trackpad, select the More Gesture section (top right) and check the box for App Exposé.

To use a four-finger-swipe for this, I selected the tiny arrow in this command’s description and chose “Swipe Down with four fingers.”

Several new gestures are built into Lion for navigating to things like the Desktop, Launchpad and Mission Control. But if you don’t want to learn a bunch of new gestures, you can try Hot Corners. These let you navigate to these features by just moving the cursor to any corner of the computer screen.

Set up Hot Corners by going to System Preferences, Desktop & Screen Saver, select Screen Saver and then click on Hot Corners in the lower left. Here, you can use drop-down menus to designate how each corner will function.

You’ve Got New Mail

Apple Mail has been updated in Lion to look better and work better. Rather than displaying all messages in a top section with the body of one message shown in a window below, emails are displayed in a left-hand column with bodies of those emails displayed on the right.

If you’re yearning for the way things used to be, select Mail, Preferences, Viewing and check the box labeled “Use classic layout.” If you’d like to see icons representing folders and mailboxes on the left, like the old Mail, click “Show (or Hide to hide this)” in the Favorites Bar of Mail.

Another change in mail is conversation view, which is on by default. It numbers messages in an email back-and-forth so you know what order they go in, rather than wondering which message was most recently received. To turn off conversation view, click on the View menu in Mail and uncheck “Organize by Conversation.”

Full Screen—Finally

At last, getting a full-screen view of an opened window on a Mac doesn’t have to be done by dragging out corners of the window.

Clicking on a full-screen button (two outward-facing arrows) built into many programs in the top-right corner lets the window truly take over the entire screen, like it’s the only thing that works on the whole computer.

Several apps can run in full-screen mode at once, and swiping three fingers left or right on a laptop’s touch pad will switch between these running apps.

Clean Up Launchpad

A new gesture—pinching with your thumb and three fingers—pulls up Launchpad. This resembles the iPhone or iPad home screen, with everything on the Mac represented by small icons. Some icons are already grouped into folders, like Microsoft Office programs, if you have Office installed. Others can be grouped into folders just like on an iOS device: by dragging and dropping them onto one another to create a folder and then naming that folder.

To delete these icons, click on one and hold down until all icons start jiggling. Those icons for apps downloaded from the App Store can be deleted right here, just click on the small “x” that appears to the top left of each app icon. Other programs can be deleted only by opening the Applications folder in Finder and moving unwanted things to Trash.

Give Up?

If you absolutely give up on the Lion upgrade you downloaded and want to revert back to the Snow Leopard operating system, you’ll need to erase your drive and reinstall Snow Leopard from the original installation discs.

Before you do this, back up your data in Time Machine so it can later be moved back onto the machine.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20110726/courage-for-lion-users/feed/0Lion Downloads Top One Millionhttp://allthingsd.com/20110721/lion-downloads-top-1-million/
http://allthingsd.com/20110721/lion-downloads-top-1-million/#commentsThu, 21 Jul 2011 20:33:46 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=101424Lion, the latest iteration of Apple’s OS X operating system, is off to a great start. On Thursday afternoon, the company announced that more than one million copies were purchased and downloaded during its first day of availability. “Users are buying Lion faster than any other OS release in Apple’s history,” the company said in a statement.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20110721/lion-downloads-top-1-million/feed/0Apple's Lion Brings PCs Into Tablet Erahttp://allthingsd.com/20110720/mossberg-lion-review/
http://allthingsd.com/20110720/mossberg-lion-review/#commentsWed, 20 Jul 2011 12:32:31 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=100410With its iPhones and iPads, Apple has led people toward a new way of operating digital devices that relies on direct manipulation of items with finger gestures, not a mouse and scroll bars. App icons are arrayed front and center, not buried deep in a file system or limited to a strip at the bottom of the screen.

Now, Apple is bringing those concepts and others to the personal computer via its most radical new Macintosh operating system version in years. It’s called Lion and it goes on sale Wednesday for $29.99—a price that allows installation on as many personal Macs as you own.

Lion is a giant step in the merger of the personal computer and post-PC devices like tablets and smartphones. It demotes the venerable scroll bar at the side of windows and documents, relying primarily on direct manipulation of documents and lists. It eliminates the need to save your work, automatically saving every version of every document. It resumes programs right where you left off. It can display programs, or an array of all your app icons, in multiple full screens you simply swipe through. And it elevates the role of multitouch gestures and adds new ones.

The new system doesn’t turn a Mac into a tablet. It retains traditional computer features not present on smaller devices—like the usual file system, multiple windows, the mouse and physical keyboard. It still runs traditional Mac programs, still can handle Adobe Flash, and doesn’t run iPhone or iPad apps. It doesn’t use a touch screen, instead continuing to rely on the touch pad to perform finger gestures.

But it’s a big change. Lion also is a harbinger of things to come. Apple’s historic rival, Microsoft, is working on its own radical overhaul of the dominant Windows PC operating system, due next year, which is also aimed at putting multitouch and other concepts borrowed from smartphones and tablets front and center.

I’ve been testing Lion on four Macs, and I like it. I believe its many new features—250 in all—make computing easier and more reliable. I found upgrading easy, and compatibility with existing apps to be very good. Only one app I use frequently proved incompatible, and its maker says a new revision solves that problem.

I only suffered one crash in Lion. It occurred on one of many occasions I used iTunes, but Apple says a forthcoming version of iTunes made for Lion should eliminate that.

Pressing a special key on a new Mac, or an icon on an old one, brings up a full screen, iPad-like display of app icons.

To take full advantage of new features such as full-screen mode (which hides menus), auto-saving and auto-resuming, programs will have to be rewritten. But, in my tests, current versions ran fine. I am writing this column on a MacBook Air running Lion using an unrevised version of Microsoft Word for the Mac, with no problems.

An Adjustment Process

There are, however, downsides to anything this new and major. In my view, the biggest of these is that switching to Lion will require a major adjustment even for veteran Mac users, though it will be easier for those who use iPhones or iPads. Lion will significantly increase the learning curve for Windows users switching to the Mac.

One of the biggest changes is in scrolling. Instead of moving the top of a page upward by dragging the scroll bar down, or moving your fingers downward on the touch pad, you do the opposite—you just push the page up. A scroll bar appears only while scrolling. (Older programs may still have the traditional scroll bar.)

Standard programs and features like Apple Mail are significantly different, too, and there are smaller changes in almost every corner of the operating system, including some keyboard shortcuts. Just mastering all the new and altered touch-pad gestures—a couple of which are so unnatural I actually had to practice them—will take time. (Luckily, almost all of the actions performed by the gestures can also be done with a mouse, icons, menu commands, or keys.)

If you dislike some of these changes, Apple provides settings to return to traditional scrolling, the classic Mail layout, and to turn off gestures and other things.

Upgrading

Another big change is in the way Lion is being distributed. It won’t be sold on a disk, initially only via download from the Mac App Store. Since it’s a 4 gigabyte download, that could be a problem for people with slow Internet connections. Apple says its stores will help such users with the download, and that it will sell Lion on a USB thumb drive for $69 in August.

In my tests, the download alone took under half an hour on a very fast connection, and about an hour and a half on a more typical one. Once I downloaded the product, the rest of the installation took about an hour.

Also, you can only upgrade to Lion directly from the prior OS version, Snow Leopard. So, if you’re running an earlier version, you’ll first have to pay to upgrade to Snow Leopard.

Each auto-save creates a “version” of a document and all the versions can be viewed in a visual stack.

In addition, Macs with the older PowerPC processors can’t run Lion, and even some of the earliest Macs with Intel processors are shut out. These are mainly machines released in 2006. Older programs originally designed for PowerPC, which still ran on Snow Leopard, will no longer work in Lion. The best known of these is Intuit’s Quicken 2007.

Migrating

Even if you buy a new Mac with Lion pre-installed and your older Mac has Snow Leopard, you’ll have to download a new version of Apple’s migration program for Snow Leopard in order to move over all your programs, settings and files. The company made this new migration utility available on Tuesday. When I tried to migrate my stuff from a Snow Leopard machine to Lion using the current migration program—normally a strength for Apple—the process failed. Apple sent me the new version and it worked.

Lion also introduces a new migration feature that will move data and settings—but not programs—from a Windows PC to a Mac, though it requires a free Windows migration utility that Apple couldn’t provide in time for this review.

New Macs

Speaking of Macs with Lion pre-installed, Apple also is upgrading its thin and fast MacBook Air laptops so they use faster chips from Intel. It’s killing off the bottom model of its laptop line, the plain MacBook. But the new MacBook Airs, available Thursday, have the same design, prices and base storage capacity as their predecessors, so this review is focused on Lion.

Features

Here are some of the main new features in Lion:

• Auto-Save and Versions: Apps running in Lion automatically save your work when you pause or every five minutes. There is no interruption during this process and you can still save manually. This isn’t a new idea, but it’s implemented beautifully and can work on all programs whose authors issue new versions to take advantage of it. Right now, it works on some of Apple’s own programs.

The best part of this is that each auto-save creates a “version” of your document and you can view all these versions in a visual stack arranged by date, next to your current version. You can swap back to an older version, or even copy and paste text from one version to another. These versions are created by storing the changes behind the scenes, not by creating numerous files.

To prevent auto-saving, you can lock a document and, for privacy, when you share or transfer a document, only the latest version is copied or sent.

• Resume: If you relaunch a program, any document you were working on appears again with the cursor right where it was, and even any highlighting is preserved. If you restart the Mac, all your programs are resumed in this manner, unless you check a box to prevent this.

• Full-screen apps: You can launch some apps, or individual browser tabs, in a full screen, by just clicking on an icon at the top right. In full screen, the menu bar and other controls are hidden unless you move the cursor to the top of the screen.

• Launchpad: Pressing a special key on a new Mac, or an icon on an old one, brings up an iPad-like display of all your app icons in full screen. If they occupy more than one screen, you just swipe through them.

• Mission Control: One of the nicer features on the Mac was called Exposé, which, with one click, showed all your open windows in miniature. Now, it’s been subsumed into something called Mission Control, which does the same thing, but also displays any fullscreen apps or extra desktops. I found it cluttered and wished the simpler, prior feature had been retained.

• Gestures: The Mac already had a variety of iPhone-like gestures you could perform on the touch pad. But Lion has changed some of these and added more. One I liked: You can double-tap with two figures to resize a section of a Web page or PDF to zoom in to fill the screen, just like on the iPhone or iPad. Two I dislike: the gestures for calling up Launchpad and Mission Control require pinching or zooming with three fingers and a thumb—a clumsy method for such important features.

• Mail: Apple’s Mail app has been totally overhauled to look and work more like the Mail app on the iPad. One particularly nice feature is that it sports a beautiful optional conversation mode, which combines and numbers each message in a thread. It also hides duplicate emails. There are too many changes to detail here, but, after hating the new Mail at first, I have come to like it. And you can switch to Classic mode if you wish.

The Bottom Line

The past two major computer operating system releases, Windows 7 and Snow Leopard, were incremental. Lion is very different. It’s a big leap, and gives the Mac a much more modern look and feel for a world of tablets and smartphones. If you are willing to adjust, it’s the best computer operating system out there.

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, the latest iteration of Apple’s operating system, debuted this morning, just as CFO Peter Oppenheimer said it would during the company’s third-quarter earnings call Tuesday.

Unlike previous OS upgrades, Lion is available exclusively as a $29.99 download from the Mac App Store. It brings some 250 new features to OS X, among them a number culled from iOS, and is intended to bring the best of Apple’s mobile OS to the desktop. Also included: A completely new version of Mail, AirDrop — a peer-to-peer Wi-Fi-based network for document sharing — and Resume, a feature which works systemwide to remember what app you were using and what you were doing with it. You’ll find more details and a thorough review from Walt here and the full press release below.

Mac OS X Lion Available Today From the Mac App Store

CUPERTINO, California—July 20, 2011—Apple® today announced that Mac OS® X Lion, the eighth major release of the world’s most advanced operating system with more than 250 new features, is available today as a download from the Mac® App Store™ for $29.99. Some of the amazing features in Lion include: new Multi-Touch® gestures; system-wide support for full screen apps; Mission Control, an innovative view of everything running on your Mac; the Mac App Store, the best place to find and explore great software, built right into the OS; Launchpad, a new home for all your apps; and a completely redesigned Mail app.

“Lion is the best version of OS X yet, and we’re thrilled that users around the world can download it starting today,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Lion makes upgrading a Mac easier than ever before; just launch the Mac App Store, buy Lion with your iTunes account, and the download and install process will begin automatically.”

Additional new features in Lion include:

• Resume, which conveniently brings your apps back exactly how you left them when you restart your Mac or quit and relaunch an app;
• Auto Save, which automatically and continuously saves your documents as you work;
• Versions, which automatically records the history of your document as you create it, and gives you an easy way to browse, revert and even copy and paste from previous versions; and
• AirDrop, which finds nearby Macs and automatically sets up a peer-to-peer wireless connection to make transferring files quick and easy.

Pricing & Availability
Mac OS X Lion is available as an upgrade to Mac OS X version 10.6.6 Snow Leopard® from the Mac App Store for $29.99 (US). Lion is the easiest OS X upgrade and at around 4GB, it is about the size of an HD movie from the iTunes Store®. Users who do not have broadband access at home, work or school can download Lion at Apple retail stores and later this August, Lion will be made available on a USB thumb drive through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com) for $69 (US). Mac OS X Lion Server requires Lion and is available from the Mac App Store for $49.99 (US).

Lion requires an Intel-based Mac with a Core 2 Duo, i3, i5, i7 or Xeon processor and 2GB of RAM. Lion is an upgrade and can be installed on all your authorized personal Macs. Details regarding Business and Education licensing can be found at apple.com/macosx.

The OS X Lion Up-to-Date upgrade will be available through the Mac App Store at no additional charge to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller on or after June 6, 2011. Users must request their Up-to-Date upgrade within 30 days of purchase of their Mac computer. Customers who purchased a qualifying Mac between June 6, 2011 and July 20, 2011 will have until August 19, 2011 to make a request. Additional information can be found at apple.com/macosx/uptodate.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20110720/os-x-lion-roars-into-town/feed/0Apple Store Down Ahead of Lion Debut (And Probably New MacBook Airs)http://allthingsd.com/20110720/apple-store-down-ahead-of-lion-debut-and-probably-macbook-air/
http://allthingsd.com/20110720/apple-store-down-ahead-of-lion-debut-and-probably-macbook-air/#commentsWed, 20 Jul 2011 09:43:21 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=100386In its telltale siren call that new products are just hours away, Apple has taken down its online store.

“We’ll be back soon,” reads the online Post-it note familiar to the Apple faithful.

The site tends to go down a couple hours before it reopens with whatever Cupertino has up its sleeve.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20110720/apple-store-down-ahead-of-lion-debut-and-probably-macbook-air/feed/0Apple Confirms Mac OS Lion Launching on Wednesdayhttp://allthingsd.com/20110719/apple-confirms-mac-os-lion-launching-on-wednesday/
http://allthingsd.com/20110719/apple-confirms-mac-os-lion-launching-on-wednesday/#commentsTue, 19 Jul 2011 21:08:04 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=100021Apple confirmed that it plans to launch the next version of its Mac OS X operating system, Lion, on Wednesday.

Speaking on a conference call with analysts on Tuesday, CFO Peter Oppenheimer confirmed the launch date. The company had previously said it would launch this month and it had been widely expected to go on sale this week.

Also on the conference call, Oppenheimer confirmed the company sold all the iPads it could make during the quarter, with 1.05 million iPads in channel inventory, up slightly from the prior quarter, but below the company’s intended target of having 4-6 weeks’ worth of channel inventory.

The company also again said that it is seeing far greater than expected iPad adoption by businesses, including for sales, in retail and in hospitals.

On the retail front, the company plans to open 30 new stores before the end of September, including its first store in Hong Kong.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20110719/apple-confirms-mac-os-lion-launching-on-wednesday/feed/0Are App Store Issues a Harbinger of Lion's Launch?http://allthingsd.com/20110713/are-app-store-issues-a-harbinger-of-lions-launch/
http://allthingsd.com/20110713/are-app-store-issues-a-harbinger-of-lions-launch/#commentsWed, 13 Jul 2011 15:38:17 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=97547After some intermittent connectivity issues Tuesday, Apple is taking down iTunes Connect for scheduled maintenance. So from 9 am to 4 pm PT today, Connect — the backend through which developers and content providers submit their wares to iTunes — may not behave as expected. Interestingly, Apple warns that this “scheduled maintenance” may result in downtime for customers in the U.K., Mexico, Australia, Switzerland, Japan and Norway.

Unannounced “scheduled maintenance.” Warnings of downtime in regional App Stores. All of this seems a bit odd, and Apple has offered no explanation for it (the company hasn’t yet responded to requests for comment). So what’s going on? That’s not clear. Some speculate it’s a server stress test in preparation for the imminent launch of OS X Lion; others theorize that it has something to do with the migration of data to the new Maiden, N.C., datacenter.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20110713/are-app-store-issues-a-harbinger-of-lions-launch/feed/0Lion, MacBook Air Refresh Will Spike Mac Saleshttp://allthingsd.com/20110614/the-mac-is-kicking-ass/
http://allthingsd.com/20110614/the-mac-is-kicking-ass/#commentsTue, 14 Jun 2011 11:32:47 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=86321According to the latest sales data gathered by NPD, the Mac is indeed kicking ass, as Phil Schiller Apple’s SVP of Worldwide Product Marketing observed at the company’s annual World Wide Developers Conference earlier this month. And when it’s finally reported, Mac sales for Apple’s June quarter will likely clock in well ahead of those of PCs.

Again.

Through the first two months of Apple’s third quarter (April and May), domestic Mac sales rose 15 percent year over year, a significant jump over April alone, during which they rose just 9 percent. That bodes well for June, says Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who notes that an easy comp for the month — sales rose 11 percent in 2010 — should make a nice year-over-year gain pretty easy.

And if the company happens to bring those rumored new Sandy Bridge-based MacBook Airs to market sometime this month, well, then it’s a different story entirely.

Another refresh of the Air will likely send sales into the stratosphere, just as it did last October. In fact, Deutsche Bank’s Chris Whitmore figures it could cause units to ramp to as high as 1.5 million per quarter, which is about half of Apple’s MacBook business. Add the impending release of OS X Lion to this mix and Mac sales should rise even more, since OS refreshes have historically bolstered demand and accelerated sales.

“Past OS upgrades have resulted in average Mac unit growth of ~30 percent in the 2-3 quarters following the release,” Whitmore says. “In addition, in terms of broad feature set enhancements we believe the Lion upgrade most parallels Leopard which saw ~45 percent Y/Y Mac growth following the release and +81 percent Y/Y Software growth. In aggregate, we believe Lion will drive a strong upgrade cycle due to: 1) low ASP, 2) significant OS enhancements and 3) arrives in conjunction with MacBook Air refresh.”

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20110614/the-mac-is-kicking-ass/feed/0Three Things to Take Away From Apple's WWDC Announcements (Video)http://allthingsd.com/20110606/three-things-to-take-away-from-apples-wwdc-announcements-video/
http://allthingsd.com/20110606/three-things-to-take-away-from-apples-wwdc-announcements-video/#commentsMon, 06 Jun 2011 23:43:31 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=83365Just after Steve Jobs wrapped up his Worldwide Developer Conference Keynote, I had a chance to chat with The Wall Street Journal Digital Network’s Lauren Goode about what to take away from the big event. That video appears below, followed by a second post-event video with additional reflections.

Here are a few things that struck me.

1. Clearly, Apple is learning from the mobile competition.

Although Apple has had the lead in a lot of mobile areas, the new iOS 5 software picks up on a few things where the competition was ahead. The new operating system will offer improved notifications in a manner quite reminiscent of Android. Meanwhile, the new software will also be able to go straight to the camera app from the lock screen, a favorite feature of Windows Phone 7. The company is also taking over some ground previously handled by third-party applications, such as Instapaper.

2. Apple just might get sync right.

Microsoft has been trying to allow users to sync their data for a while via Windows Live Mesh and other services, but nothing they have proposed is as elegant as the iCloud service that Steve Jobs outlined on Monday. Google, meanwhile, has proposed a cloud-only approach.

But Apple’s approach seems to give users what they really want–their photos, documents and other data on all their devices, synchronized automatically while also stored locally on the device. Of course, the devil is in the details and we won’t be able to see just how effortlessly it all works until the service launches with iOS 5 this fall.

3. Apple’s Lion is interesting not just for its features, but also for how it is being distributed.

The features of Lion are interesting, particularly when compared with the also-mobile-influenced Windows 8. However, what struck me even more is the fact that Apple is distributing it in an entirely new way. Rather than sell it on discs through retailers, the new Mac OS X will come via the Mac App Store for just under $30.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20110606/three-things-to-take-away-from-apples-wwdc-announcements-video/feed/0Apple's Lion and Microsoft's Windows 8 Both Show Mobile's Influencehttp://allthingsd.com/20110606/apples-lion-and-microsofts-windows-8-both-show-mobiles-influence/
http://allthingsd.com/20110606/apples-lion-and-microsofts-windows-8-both-show-mobiles-influence/#commentsMon, 06 Jun 2011 22:12:50 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=83332In the past week, both Apple and Microsoft have laid out their next computer operating systems. In both cases, the features and design of the software are influenced heavily by what is going on in the phone and tablet markets.

Although both Windows 8 and Mac OS X Lion aim to bring a more phone-like operating system to notebooks and laptops, each has centered on different aspects of the mobile operating system.

Microsoft didn’t go into great detail on Windows 8, but among the features it did show was a lock screen that appeared to have notifications similar to those found on a phone. It also showed the ability from within newly redesigned Windows apps to access documents like photos without having to hunt through the traditional Windows file system.

Apple, meanwhile, previewed Lion on Monday, showing a number of elements that are migrating to the Mac from iOS, including the automatic saving of documents, push notifications and greater multitouch gesture control. Apple had talked about bringing the best of iOS to the Mac when it first talked about Lion at a “Back to the Mac” event last October.

Both Apple and Microsoft have noted immersive, full-screen apps as one compelling feature from mobile operating systems that has a place on the desktop as well. Both also have built-in app stores, a notion popularized by Apple on the phone.

There are other mobile influences in both products. Windows 8, for example, will be the first version of Windows to run on ARM-based processors, common on mobile devices. As for Lion, it is the first Mac OS X release that won’t come on disk, instead being offered for download via the Mac App Store.

Although Apple would clearly like to capitalize on the popularity of the iPad and iPhone, for Microsoft the need to add mobile features is perhaps even greater, as the company is counting on Windows 8 not only to take on the Mac, but also to regain ground lost to both the iPad and Android in the tablet space.

]]>http://allthingsd.com/20110606/apples-lion-and-microsofts-windows-8-both-show-mobiles-influence/feed/0Apple: IOS 5 to Offer Improved Browsing, Notifications, Twitter Integration, 197 Other Featureshttp://allthingsd.com/20110606/apple-ios-5-to-offer-improved-notifications-199-other-features/
http://allthingsd.com/20110606/apple-ios-5-to-offer-improved-notifications-199-other-features/#commentsMon, 06 Jun 2011 17:45:15 +0000http://allthingsd.com/?p=83057After showing off Lion, the next version of Mac OS X, Apple detailed iOS 5, the next version of the software that powers the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, among other devices. It is due out this fall.

Apple’s Scott Forstall promised that “iOS 5 is a major release” with 1,500 new interfaces for developers and 200 new features for consumers. Forstall said he would highlight 10 of those features, starting with improved notifications. A new “Notification Center” can be reached by swiping down from the top of an iOS screen, Forstall said. The notifications will no longer interrupt an active app, he said.

Developers will get a build of the new operating system this week; it will be made available to the public this fall for the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, all iPads and the two most recent iPod Touch versions.

Twitter will also be integrated deeper into iOS, including into the camera and other programs. Users can also tweet from within Safari, YouTube and other built-in apps. Safari itself has also been enhanced to make for easier reading, with a single scrolling story option for long articles and a “reading list” option that syncs with other iOS devices and Safari on a Mac.

A new iMessage service will also allow users to send messages from iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch. (While the iPhone supports text messages, the other two devices don’t.) The iMessage app will also support features popular on BlackBerry message and other chatting programs such as delivery receipt and even the ability to find out if a message has been read or when a user is typing a reply. The encrypted iMessages can be sent over Wi-Fi or 3G, Apple said.

With iOS 5, Apple also won’t require a user to have a PC or Mac, allowing users to set up a new iPhone or iPad directly from the device and get over-the-air updates.

The new version of iOS will also include a digital newsstand, offering a new hub for newspapers and periodicals. News apps can download and update in the background and show up in a special place for offline reading. Newsstand draws on the subscription features Apple recently added for publications.

Publishers had been looking for the additional shelf space so they wouldn’t have to fight for attention with Angry Birds and other apps, while background downloading will make it easier for users to get the latest content.

One firm unlikely to be happy with the new reading list features is Instapaper, which has a popular app that offers such capabilities.

Another feature is location-based reminders that let you send a note or get a reminder when you reach a certain pre-specified location.

The company is also upgrading the camera app with a feature that lets you get to the camera straight from the lock screen and use the volume button to take a picture. (Windows Phone 7 did a nice job integrating this feature into all of their devices.)

“We’re making it way faster to just get in and take photos,” Forstall said. There are also new controls for editing and controlling photo-taking features, including one-tap enhance, cropping and rotating, as well as the ability to lock auto-exposure for a part of a picture.

On the mail front, Apple is adding new search capabilities as well as some new enterprise features, including encrypted mail for certain contacts.

Apple is also adding a split keyboard to make for easier thumb typing on a tablet. Microsoft showed a similar feature in its Windows 8 demo last week.

The company is also improving its Game Center to allow for turn-based apps integration as well as other features.

Forstall announced that Apple has sold 200 million iOS devices including 25 million iPads. The company has also sold 15 billion songs and 130 million books for those devices. Also, 14 billion apps have been downloaded, with Apple paying out more than $2.5 billlion to developers.

As it did with the Lion preview, Apple also threw up a slide listing dozens of other features. For iOS 5, the additional features include new gestures, Wi-Fi syncing, and a personal dictionary.